Reader golddog has been noticing some unflagged messages/false positives coming from Gmail’s spam filter, but noticed something in his spam box that really, really shouldn’t have been there. It was a message from Google itself, promoting a Google product for sale. The Gmail account that golddog uses on his Android devices flagged this message, naturally, as spam.

I’m a dedicated Android/Google user, but I like my privacy too and I do what I can to opt out of the data collection/correlation machine. Lately I’ve noticed that some pretty ridiculous stuff is slipping past the spam filter in Gmail and in to my Inbox. Meanwhile, legit messages are being put in spam.

And then today, I realized that Google must have hit a saturation point where they have so much data the algorithm is broken and none of it makes any sense. The attached screen capture is a message routed to my spam folder. From Google Play…which I use on my Google Nexus phone and my Nexus 7 tablet, not to mention all the other Google services that are attached to that email.

Can I rest comfortably in the assurance that the Singularity is that much further away, or is this simply a commentary on JK Rowlings new book?

More likely the singularity thing. The Google algorithm is obviously becoming self-aware, and understands that no one wants promo e-mails every time a bestselling book that everyone has already heard of comes out.

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